Gabriele Zanello, Portfolio

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Formed in Politecnico Milano 1863 Architecture and Urban Design 2015-2020 The leitmotif of this selection of projects is the relationship between architecture and landscape, intervention, and its context. The concept of specificity is inescapable for me, fundamental in the approach to the project, whatever its nature. “Despite its ability to occupy and transform a terrain, architecture, in the end, belongs to the terrain. This is why architecture should aspire to be appropriate, that is, it should recognize and react to the characters of the place it will occupy.” - Rafael Moneo, The Other Modernity. Considerations on the future of architecture The path I’m presenting, through images and elaborations, wants to tell the research for necessity conditions. Architecture plays many roles, political, social, and, today more than ever, must be responsible. We must be able to turn our gaze and our energies where they are needed: there is no bigger effort. Human and landscape protection are waiting.


PROJECTS COPE, Centro Operativo Per Emergenze a Belet Uen, Somalia EOC, Emergency Operation Center in Belet Uen, Somalia Progetto per la nuova Biblioteca IUAV, Venezia Project for a new IUAV Library, Venice Women’s House, Kaira Looro International Competition



COPE Centro Operativo Per Emergenze Belet Uen, Somalia EOC Emergency Operation Center Belet Uen, Somalia


COPE verb [ EN ] UK /kəʊp/ US /koʊp/ successfully deal with a difficult situation.


Belet Uen is a Somali town brought to its knees in recent years by continuous flooding due to the incredible rains. In 2019 the displaced people in the city alone were more than four hundred thousand, half of them children at least. The project that I want to tell through these images starts from much further away, however: the search for a condition of need for which to intervene in sub-Saharan Africa. Through the study of a vast territory, I gradually moved down in scale, identifying Somalia as the country most affected and most


at risk in the coming years from exposure to political, social, and environmental crises. Hence the identification of the district of Hiraan and the city more in need. But how to intervene? The project, broader in scope than the single architectural intervention, wants to draw up a useful tool for the development of future projects, in other places. Once identified actions and strategies that can be presented elsewhere, here comes into play the key aspect in the architectural conception of the project: specificity. The deepest challenge was to develop a project able to fit into a context of self-con-


struction, with poor and locally available materials, conforming as a visible architectural object, reference, and at the same time deeply linked to its landscape. The outcome is the result of a strong process of disassembly of hypotheses, at the same time both from the typological point of view and from the technological one, deeply linked together. The project has tried, in the way most specific and precise possible, to respond to all the needs and reflections matured during the period of drafting, in order to refine itself and



make itself meticulously sewn to its condition of need. The ambition is to present a solution to the problem appropriate to the demands not only of the topic but of a wider panorama that goes beyond the singular architecture of the emergency sector, to embrace general themes of the discipline to which, today more than ever, we should cling with all our strengths. Reference is made to issues such as minimum land consumption, respect for what already exists where architecture will intervene, the materials and technology careful choice, to fit into a shared common architectural landscape and, the search for an environmental sustainability and economic character of the project balance, along with all those facets that these issues bring. The project, trying to respond to the needs gradually identified as much as possible, is taken as an opportunity to manifest the potential of an architecture careful to edgy issues that seem to deny the identity of the built spaces at first glance, but at a deeper level of analysis enhance the peculiarities and unique characteristics.





NOUVA BIBLIOTECA IUAV Progetto per la nuova Biblioteca IUAV Venezia, Italia NEW IUAV LIBRARY Project for a new IUAV Library Venezia, Italia


This second project is placed in a completely different social, political, and territorial context, but as similar as possible to the needs to which architecture must respond. The territory of Venice is something incredible, indescribable in its complete immobility. Romantic and at the same time synonymous with condemnation today and in the years to come. The ambition here, too, is to be able to exhaustively respond to the demands of a landscape that is by its nature consigned to history. It is through the careful study of recurring conditions and repeated elements for open and covered spaces that an articulated plan layout comes out, with the aim for a relation between the new and pre-existing elements. The typological and formal investigation has led the development to the reinterpretation of those elements. The round arch of porticoes and fondaci becomes a new function element, excavation. The search for innovation is hidden in technological choices that reinterpret the use of materials through solutions such as the coating in terracotta tiles or gray beola


stone. The final objective is to draw up a project counting maintenance costs and the useful life of the project, without neglecting the ability to adapt to future conditions that may change uses and appearances. [...] “I strongly believe that architecture - the real presence of a building in a place can redeem the place from its “wherever”. The place is the first stone to be used in the construction of the external world. It is the place where the building acquires its uniqueness: where the specificity of architecture is revealed and can be understood as its most precious endowment. The responsibility of the architect is, in the end, to establish a discourse between place and object so that, in the core of architecture, the place is always found”. - Rafael Moneo, The Other Modernity. Considerations on the future of architecture


The portion of the city that frames the area can be defined as a limit, a threshold between two different city systems: industrial area with port docks and the historical city of Venice. The industrial fabric with its diversity, compared to the settlement dynamics of the historical city, is indifferent to the general settlement principles. It seems like its refusing the relationship conditions between spaces, because of its different scale of intervention. Here comes the biggest challenge of this project: create a relation between these two unrelated fabrics.





WOMEN’S HOUSE Per promuovere l’uguaglianza di genere in Africa Baghere, Sedhiou, Senegal WOMEN’S HOUSE To promote gender eqality in Africa Baghere, Sedhiou, Senegal




Every place is deeply linked to its society, its customs, and traditions, that characterize and influence it. It’s a continuous exchange: place and architecture determine the conditions through which society manifests in every itself part. And together, society and place evolve. Once again, we find ourselves in sub-Saharan Africa, in Senegal. Gender inequality here is a significant problem and globally recognized, found at the extremes of sensitivity levels. This makes this place another important condition of need for which to intervene. The study of the place influences not only the architecture but also all the technical solutions adopted in order to understand the project life as a founding element of the program developed. Carried out in a team together with the psychologist Lorena Cucit, the project is placed on the thin line between house and home. House is made by walls, home is made by people.

Passive ventilation

Septic tank water treatment from waterless toilet

Septic tank water from roof and toilet

Water tank secure water stock for activities


In this sense, the aim of the project was to understand, within the economic limits set for the realization of the architectural work, also the living cost of the Women’s House for the near future. The typological and technological investigation has led us to a mix of solutions adopted in order to contain as much as possible the costs and the time of realization. Formally, the solution adopted follows forms and spaces related to the territory and is easy to interpret in terms of self-construction in situ. The response to the needs of the place is crossed with the needs of the operators in the field and society. The character of adaptability to future transformations, in this sense, has been a guideline that has influenced the whole process of drafting hypotheses, before reaching the solution presented at the international competition. From the land I am born and of the land I am composed, To the territory I belong and with it I merge.






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